


Tango à Trois

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: Two is Better than One, Three is Better than Two (Polyamourous Stories) [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Best Friends, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexuality, Brother-Sister Relationships, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Getting Together, Love Confessions, Male Friendship, Multi, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Pre-Poly, Teenage Dorks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-11-15 01:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: (Formerly known as "Urban Moonflowers")Aoi Zaizen is a confused bisexual girl with two crushes at once and who doesn't know how to cope with that.Miyu Sugisaki is Aoi's best friend with a crush and doesn't know how to cope with growing another crush.Yusaku Fujiki is a confused teenager with a crush on his classmate and doesn't know how to cope with having a crush at all.





	1. Hollyhock

**Author's Note:**

> If everything feels kind of weird, it's because it's all set in a no-LI, no-Link VRAINS-ish AU for VRAINS I've come up with like eons ago in Internet time.
> 
> I came up with this ship on the fly (haha pun) in a group chat on Discord and stuck with it for some goddamn reason, and now I can't let go of it.  
> In case you were curious yes I actually have some semblance of plan for this despite having this rushed, shitty first chapter because this is literally a random outlet for when I'm less inspired by my actual WIP novels lmao.  
> While I know nobody is really gonna give a shit, I'm still posting it to show there are other ships than DSS around this hell of an Earth 
> 
> xoxo, Fly

Aoi had always been a rather confused girl when it was about romance. She used to blame it on her brother’s overprotectiveness, but seeing as she was still confused when he started dating Ema, her current future sister-in-law (there was no way they were getting split up, they were the perfect awkward couple in her eyes), that had clearly been a wrong hypothesis and, needless to say, she felt dumb because of it.

In fact, Aoi was confused enough by what love even was to begin with. It was about finding people attractive and wanting to spend something like eternity with them, right? So why did she find everyone attractive? Why were girls cute and boys handsome? Wasn’t she supposed to be like her brother Akira and find either boys or girls attractive? He had told her it was fine if she was into girls, but he had never said anything about being into both, if that was the term for it. What if that wasn’t natural? What if she was never meant to find both attractive? Was she defective? So many questions…

 

So she turned to her childhood best friend, Miyu. The latter had always been more in-touch with relationships and socializing, she’d have an answer, right? So they sent each other messages on one night, because Aoi was way too shy and intimidated to bring up such a sensitive topic in a public setting like school (someone could hear them, and it’d be catastrophic). Sure enough, Miyu told her it was called being bisexual, and it was perfectly normal.

Aoi’s heart strangely fluttered when her best friend, her most trusted confident, confessed to her that she, too, was bisexual and into both girls and boys. Was it relief or excitement, she didn’t know. She couldn’t guess or make a solid supposition, she couldn’t know.

 

On another evening, she took it to Ema to make sure it was normal. Her brother’s girlfriend, recently turned fiancée, had truly become the big sister figure she had never gotten: Ema was the best person to confide something to and yet make sure her brother would never be aware of it unless Aoi told him herself. Ema had taken the topic seriously yet lightly, never overdramatizing everything like her sister-in-law had the tendency to do. However, even after confiding that she, too, was a bi lady (there really were a lot of bisexuals in her circles, huh), the flutter in Aoi’s heart didn’t appear again. She put it on the behalf that it could have just been her relief making her heart be all weird, but… there had to be something more to it. She knew it.

Aoi’s next step was talking it out with a long-distance friend she had met right before her brother had gotten his current job at SOL: Kiku. By that point, she knew she was bisexual and to distinguish romantic attraction from platonic feelings (mostly by using her brother and Kiku as references), but she still wanted to talk it out with another confident. Much to her fortune, Kiku took the news very well, wording huge words of supports and wishing her all the happiness in the world she could muster. The encouragement would have not been this overwhelming would Kiku’s boyfriend Takeru not have heard her happy squeals and joined in on the fun. Aoi was pretty sure she was radiating red when she got showered with an entire dictionary of nice words.

Eventually, she told her brother about it. Even if he was the one person she trusted the most in the world, the one she’d no doubt count on would something ever go wrong, the man who had raised her instead of their parents since she had been ten, she was still tense when telling him about it. He had shown distress at first, mostly because of how nervous she was when asking him “big brother, can we have a talk, please?”, but quickly untensed when she spat out the information. A pat on her shoulder and a hug later, her ears almost went deaf when he told her he was proud of her for being brave enough to tell him and wished her the best of lucks. Her entire being destressed with all of this behind her, but that didn’t solve another issue that had risen.

 

The fluttering in her heart.

 

The thing was, Aoi had ever only felt her heart flutter in this strange, intense way around two persons: Miyu and a boy from her class that she had eventually befriended. She wasn’t surprised to figure out she had a crush on Miyu: it only took her a few days to get over it, strangely enough. Perhaps it was because they had known each other for years; and knowing her best friend was no stranger to being attracted to girls comforted her into getting over it and acknowledging her romantic feelings. They had always been very close, always holding hands as children in the park and indulging in it when nobody was looking in middle school: there was nothing weird about what they were doing, what she was feeling.

Perhaps there even was a chance for Miyu to be in love with her too.

 

However, the boy was another question altogether. Yusaku Fujiki was his name: he had always been rather quiet, not overly shrouded in mystery but never proactive in group conversations. They had shared classes for a few years by then, mostly subjects where she rather preferred teaming up with someone as discreet and apparently socially awkward as Fujiki rather than anyone else in the classroom (it also allowed her to escape from alpha bitchy popular girls and guys trying to hit on her as soon as they crossed gazes). Eventually, they became comrades, then friends, hanging out in most classes and between those to pass the time. Miyu had never been in the same class or workgroup as her: but it wasn’t too grievous when she had someone to rely upon, her now-trusted Yusaku.

Oh, that phrasing may have been too forward.

While Miyu and she had always been on a first-name basis, as calling each other by one’s surname was not a thing in kindergarten times, it hadn’t been the same with Fujiki. Getting to know each other as classmates passing papers off to each other to pass the time, helping each other in subjects in which they absolutely sucked (hers was Maths, his was Literature, and they were fine with that), joking about shared teachers were how they bonded, different experiences still retaining value to them: but they had to grow comfortable with the other and being close to them.

It wasn’t an easy task for someone like Aoi, who had always been “the SOL Security Manager’s sister” and trying to be profited upon (and, usually, her brother could immediately tell and sent them off): but Yusaku wasn’t like the others. He had never given a single damn about her brother’s job (or her brother at all, now that she thought about it), had never seen her as anything other than a classmate he liked to hang out with even outside of classes.

 

And that was where it hurt, in a way.

 

She was convinced Yusaku only saw them as that: friends. Considering their respective characters, it was already a miracle they had befriended each other and texted the other so often (as in, every day, and she was always excited to see what next trivia he could send her about his cat Ai and his friend Jin and his online best friend Takeru… Wait, that name was familiar), she couldn’t ask him to do much more than that. They were too introverted to have a mutual crush on each other…

…oh wait, that was even weirder.

Okay, finding both genders endearing and attractive was perfectly fine. Aoi was bi, her best friend was bi, her sister-in-law was bi… but falling in love with two persons at once, if that was her case, had to be abnormal. No, her feelings for Yusaku had to be something else… Perhaps she saw him as a twin brother? No chance, it was different from how she felt about her brother… Perhaps she saw him the same way she viewed Kiku, a trusty friend? No, no luck there either, there was the flutter and the weird pulses to hold his hand and maybe kiss him passionately against the wall… But then, what did she feel for Miyu?

The same thing, yes. Oops.


	2. Moonflower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yo can I write Sapphic characters right or something, because I hadn't done so in quite a while before like last month, and I almost can't tell by myself l m a o  
> But yeah. Miyu-centric chapter. I had to give her a personality, so if the show debunks it, then fuck. Ain't like my Yoosakoo is very canon either, so w/e. It's also a bit longer because I'm getting comfortable with where this story is heading hehehehe

Miyu had always had this something with love that made her strangely aware of feelings and romantic tensions around her. She couldn’t exactly say what it was, or describe this feeling any clearer than “I just feel it”, but she thought that, as long as she used her sense for the greater good, it was fine not to know its secrets.

Perhaps it was because she knew Aoi would someday come to her and ask her what she thought about her situation, about how weird it was to be into both genders when she should have been attracted to either boys or girls and nothing else. Miyu had known for a long time about her own bisexuality: she was, however, as hopeful as she could be when she realized her best friend she was so in love with could be reciprocating her feelings.

Unapologetically hoping that to be true wasn’t the nicest of things she had done but saying otherwise would have been dead dishonest.

 

She didn’t feel this good when Aoi asked her if it was fine to feel like she was in love with two persons at the same time. Maybe it was because she didn’t feel ready to share her precious Aoi with someone else just yet, maybe it was because she worried that she wouldn’t be included in these feelings. Aoi meant the world to her, her and her cat Aqua, and she’d be heartbroken if her love wasn’t even a tiny bit reciprocated.

Of course, Miyu would force herself to get over it. Aoi was her dearest friend: she’d do nothing to ruin their friendship, their precious bonds. She couldn’t do anything that would produce such a disastrous effect. If she wasn’t sure about her feelings, then she’d say nothing, stay silent and continue watching things with a smile. The time they spent together as friends meant so much more than getting together if doing that would only bring tension among themselves.

Because she had sworn to be honest until the end, she couldn’t bring herself to lie about Aoi falling in love with two different persons at once. It was a rare thing, of course, but there was a name for it and it was fine if everybody consented: polyamory. There was nothing wrong with falling in love with multiple people and having multiple partners as long as everyone knew about it and was on a similar page. Aoi deserved to know she wasn’t doing anything wrong, that her feelings weren’t wrong. Despite the sting in her heart, Miyu felt happier when hearing Aoi’s sigh of relief, almost melting in her arms as the brunette sunk into her own relaxed stance.

 

And yet they started dating.

 

It came out of nowhere, to be frank. They were chilling in the park, looking at people passing by, perhaps even a bit envious of those with no romantic issues. Aoi and Miyu had always been clear about their romantic lives to each other: it was part of their friend pact. Aoi knew Miyu had a crush on a same-sex friend and was afraid she’d be rejected, Miyu knew Aoi had two crushes at once and didn’t really know what to do with them. Couples holding hands, looking all lovey-dovey, used to charm her: nowadays, Miyu was a bit bitterer about it, wishing it could have been her, wishing it could be her. She just wanted to either get over her crush or act upon it, but she was stuck in the limbo, and it hurt.

So she muttered to herself, “God I wish I had a girlfriend.”

And Aoi, seemingly unaware she was even reacting vocally to it, completed with “I wish I was”.

 

For the first time in her life, Miyu was taken over by a love-related impulse. Her head bolted in her friend’s direction, shocked by what she just heard, deafened by disbelief. That couldn’t have been happening, right? It was way, way too good to be true.

“Wait, Aoi, did I hear what I heard?” she still asked to make sure. Not to get her hopes too high up, despite the heart beating in her chest and her eyes filling with sparkles.

Aoi didn’t say anything at first, too busy trying to hide her face under her hands, red flashing all over her cheeks. Poor, poor girl, Miyu thought, her hands desperately wanting to hold hers in an attempt to calm her down; but she also knew it’d more than likely cause her to panic furthermore, and that wouldn’t help anything at all.

“I… I really said that…” Aoi’s voice was trembling and she still wasn’t looking at her friend. “I’m sorry…”

 

A second impulse, a hug. The brunette’s eyes immerged again from her hands, her poor trembling palms and fingers, finally looking back at the other girl on the bench. If she wasn’t so calm, if she hadn’t been so ready for such a day to happen, perhaps Miyu would have been flushed and panicked, lost in the flow. Instead, she was the steady force of them and she planned on making the ship sail smoothly; so she picked her friend’s hand in hers.

“I’m glad you feel the same way about me than I feel about you, Aoi.”

Only delight could be felt when she saw her crush’s face light up with what she could only assume were joy and reassurance, a new sense of comfort found in what would have been a very unfortunate slipup nobody would have the pleasure to commit.

“I’m… happy to say I’m included in your two crushes. I really am.”

Aoi stood silent, about to cry, her arms around Miyu’s shoulder, like an anchor on a rock.

“See? It’ll be alright…”

 

Eventually, they sank back into a comfortable silence, fingers intertwined. They didn’t need to tell the other what they now were: secret girlfriends, with a love hidden away from the world, ready to burst at the face of society but still stored away so its full beauty could bloom properly; maybe more, absolutely nothing less.

Aoi had her head lulling on her shoulder, smiling gently to the breeze blowing through the air. They watched couples passing by, chattering, bubbling, loving. The frustration in Miyu’s heart was entirely gone, eradicated, vanished, replaced with burning hopes and wants for the future. Alas, she knew questions would soon rise, because they knew everything about each other, and the questions would only come back to the surface like bubbles from the depths of the seafloor. She knew they needed to have one conversation they both weren’t ready for, but that would be better being over with as quickly as possible.

Yes, that one. The one that had been poisoning the well for so long, the one that had prevented her from going ahead and finding the perfect plan. The fifty-fifty that wasn’t, that hadn’t been, only a mock-up of her mind while still feeling so real. She, frankly, didn’t feel ready to kickstart their relationship if that wasn’t the one question over with; but Miyu was impatient, and she didn’t want to wait to indulge in loving Aoi ever again. She wanted to embrace her, kiss her, do less than religious affairs behind her brother’s back and living a romantic life together, spend so much time alone together that they would feel like they could win against everything in the world. She had waited for too long for this to happen that she, simply, purely, couldn’t wait to have the dreaded conversation. She had waited for this day to happen for too long to take even longer to sort things out and feel entirely comfortable with what was, admittedly, a miracle.

 

“Hey, Aoi… Mind if we have a little talk?”

Her girlfriend’s head slightly rose, almost like someone waking up from a little slumber.

“What talk?”

“Who’s your second crush?”

 

A less comfortable, thicker and heavier silent settled between them. Miyu’s eyes were focused on looking as benevolent as possible, to comfort Aoi into talking about it to her. If not her best friend and confident, who would relieve her from her burden? Miyu could shoulder the pain, no issue. If they were going to be in love and aware of it, then they’d better share their pain among themselves, stick together. Sticks and bones couldn’t break their bones now.

“Fu… Yusaku Fujiki,” Aoi eventually whispered under her breath, just enough so Miyu would hear it, but discreet enough not to be heard by the rest of the world.

 

That name sounded familiar. If she wasn’t wrong, she knew exactly who this was. In a way, it was reassuring to have a face to put on the name, on the feelings.

“Isn’t he a guy from your class? I feel like I’ve seen him before.”

“That’s the case. I think I introduced you to him, a while back… I don’t know if you’ve ever socialized or anything, you’ve never talked to me about him…”

And that was true.

“We haven’t spoken much to each other than, frankly, though we did get along just fine. I’ve thought for a while we should talk more too, but recently, all we’ve exchanged are a few conversations and text messages.”

“Oh… That’s good to hear. I was afraid you were going to be upset about it.”

“In a way… It could work. Have I ever told you about polyamorous triads?”

 

There was no lie, no irony, no sarcasm to be found in her words. Hands still tied together by an invisible red string, Miyu knew it’d be a arduous task to get the three of them together, especially if… she needed to check something.

“Aoi, do you know if he loves you back?”

“I… can’t tell. I wish I had a clear answer, but all I know is that we’ve exchanged some awkward looks at times and that I feel the same way about him than about you. I wish I knew more, I really do.”

“That’s fine. We’ll have to see.”

 

It’d be all right, she knew it, so she let themselves rest and indulge in each other’s presence.


	3. Wisteria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusaku has a crush and it's an issue, ft. Entrustshipping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like flowers and I like making awful puns for my titles, that's it, that's my entire personality online.  
> I need to put more Entrust in this smh, I haven't tagged it for nothing goddammit.  
> Also I guess AUsaku is teenage me lmao, I write him like I'd write myself at 16 tbh

Yusaku had thought for the longest time love was a human-sized joke poisoning the waters for everyone involved. Around him, at school, in the neighbourhood, online, he only saw it corrupt people’s relationships by creating jealousy and tensions, overcomplicating something that could just be so simple, so simplistic to understand. If anyone could just be friends, or be fine with people loving other people aside from them, everything would be so much better…

As it stood, Yusaku also didn’t see why people would get so worked up over people having multiple crushes. It had been established for centuries, if not thousands of years, that everyone apparently wanted to screw each other all the time. That was what he remembered from his literature classes for sure, even if he was very much certain it wasn’t what he was meant to take away from these. Oh well, it wasn’t like he cared enough to try remembering what he was actually supposed to learn there.

 

His opinions on love started to soften up after seeing his best friend, Takeru, start dating. They had met each other online, through chatrooms long extinct. They had simply stuck together: he couldn’t exactly remember what make them get so close to each other, but Yusaku knew he’d kill a dude for Takeru, and that Takeru could do the same for him, and that was all that counted to him. Anything or anyone else could go home, nobody could change his perspective on their bonds.

Yusaku already knew about Kiku, Takeru’s girlfriend, before they got together. She was his childhood friend and, in a way, there already were some romantic tensions between them. She often appeared on Takeru’s webcam feed when they were skyping each other, always making sure to say hi to him and give him a smile, before reminding both guys not to go to sleep at ungodly hours of the night. At the beginning, she sank back into the shadows, but she stuck around more and more often. Not that it displeased Yusaku: she wasn’t hyper, she wasn’t too loud, she was fine to talk to, and he couldn’t deny seeing her tease Takeru was funnier than anything he’d see at school.

Kiku and Takeru were the poster children of the “Lucky Childhood Friends” trope (as he had read online, he spent way too much time lurking there, and was now the holder of a lot of useless knowledge such as this): strong bonds, full trust and complicity, shared tastes and hobbies, shared history, even similar personality traits. They were both kind-hearted, always ready to worry for their friends and family. Even their families were closed, as Kiku regularly talked about Takeru’s grandparents on webcam, even being able to speak about his parents. It was, as such, no surprise when he learnt the Homuras had become Kiku’s family-in-law before marriage.

 

It felt smooth, so strangely smooth to Yusaku. He who was used to witnessing couples falling apart quicker than you could say “I love you”, to friendships breaking under the weight of societal obligations and poor attempts at controlling teenage impulses, resisting teen spirit as hard as they could; wasn’t shocked to see his closest friend get in a relationship with someone else.

It wasn’t even like Takeru had told him much about his romantic feelings. In a way, perhaps it was because Yusaku had always known, had always felt it was there, somewhere, and that despite seemingly not understanding feeling close to someone above the point of wanting to be friends and spending time doing stupid stuff together. It just… happened. Takeru and Kiku got together, almost as if they had always meant to do. There was no big announcement either: Takeru just told him, one day, during a skype call, “Oh, yeah, Kiku and I are dating now, I have a date with her tomorrow, I’m so excited!”.

And Yusaku, he who thought love was a waste of time and energy, he who thought love was a trap poisoning everyone’s lives until bones were reduced to dust, he who would have otherwise been concerned for Takeru’s feelings now that he engaged on a dangerous path, _rejoiced_.

 

He didn’t know what it was about the situation that made it feel so natural to him. Perhaps it was because he knew these two got along just fine and would have no issue getting over anything in their path? He couldn’t tell and that frustrated him to no end. He liked to know everything, to understand anything around him easily, to be able to predict what could happen.  

Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was because he was falling in love at the same time and wished his endgame would be this smooth, this comfortable to grasp.

 

Of course, this was something he couldn’t have known at the time. He didn’t have the lookback needed to realize this was happening to him much more violently than for Takeru. It was like one day he had just become friends with a girl from his class and the next he was falling for her quicker than a high-speed train launched with nobody inside and no way to stop it, to reduce its speed. Terrifying to live through, even more terrifying to imagine and live through at the same time. Rationalizing the irrational didn’t bring him any relief about the situation.

That was why, at first, he couldn’t pinpoint what made Aoi Zaizen, his classmate, so interesting and intriguing to him. She was rather ordinary-looking, not too drastically different from the rest of their class, yet something about her sparked when everybody else was dull. Perhaps it was because he frankly thought she was cute with her neck-length hair and brown eyes, perhaps it was because they had similar personalities and hanging out with someone who could appreciate alone time and quiet was what he was desperately searching in someone.

In all cases, he was getting closer and closer to her. In fact, he appreciated speaking to her about what they liked and disliked, making their homework together as to remediate to their flaws at school (he still sucked at Literature, but at least he could help her with Maths), just hanging out with her, in fact. It was still very much fine if they just stood together in the same room, her reading a book and him sending texts to Takeru as he tried to beat some awfully difficult level in some ridiculously hard surgery game on a handheld console; all that truly mattered that they were together, spending time with each other, two persons isolated from the rest of the world before society would call them back to their obligations and duties.

 

They, however, never spoke about love-related matters. He wouldn’t ever dare talk to her about it, so he turned to Takeru to know if this was actually a growing crush he didn’t know what to do with or if it was a fluke. He wished it was a fluke, oh did he wish; but there was this part of him who just knew what his friend was going to tell him, which wasn’t truly ready for it, more dreadful in anticipation than reassured by the feeling of knowing where this was going. Closer to fatality than admitting and getting over it, in a way.

Sure enough, Takeru didn’t disappoint. He graced his best friend with a smile and an unofficial diagnosis: “Yeah, I think you could be in love, Yusaku,” he told him with this kind tone of his and warm, empathic eyes. Nothing less and nothing more. It went smoothly, and Yusaku didn’t even have the time to deny the facts. He was just dazed, in a way, blinded to anything other than his feelings and trapped in a cell of his own. Ah, the irony burnt.

 

“The thing is… she’s already dating someone,” Yusaku then told his friend, remembering seeing Aoi hold another girl’s hand.

That day had stung him right in the art like an arrow covered in vinegar. For the real first time in his life, he wanted to be someone else, to have what they had, to be in their place… He wanted to be this girl. He wanted to be Aoi’s girlfriend, the one holding her hand, but he couldn’t be. She was into girls, he was a boy, and that was it. He remembered retaining an urge to spill a tear that day.

“Oh… I’m so sorry to hear that, Yusaku,” Takeru replied, sadness and disappointment painted all across his face. This boy was a blessing, he really was.

“I’m sorry too,” Kiku said from the other side of the screen, having heard everything, being almost as much of a confident than Takeru himself.

“It’s… fine.”

 

It wasn’t fine. He didn’t want to become deadly envious, to grow into the kind of people he had thought before were ridiculously edgy and gritty. He didn’t want to stoop so low and be a bloody hypocrite, so he clenched his feelings and told himself to get over it. Over and over again.

“Though… Aoi said something about having two crushes, no?”

Takeru let a strange piece of information drop into the desk and the air, prompting Kiku to turn around quickly and Yusaku’s jaw to almost drop. What was this about?

“Takeru, Aoi told us to keep it a secret!!”

“S-sorry! Ha, we… we’ll have to go, Yusaku. Take care, okay? And maybe talk it out with Aoi, who knows!”

 

The conversation ended shortly thereafter, leaving the blue-haired boy wondering what this “second crush” thing all was. Kiku seemed very insistent as to keep it a secret, shrouded in mystery, albeit her boyfriend’s last words had left a hope in his heart. If this was true, maybe he had a chance. Maybe, just maybe, he could make it into her heart. As long as he didn’t picture himself as a warrior, as long as he wasn’t a predator, they could at least remain friends. Either he got over it, he hoped she’d break up, or… they all found a way to make it possible.

Thinking about, Aoi’s girlfriend wasn’t an enemy. Miyu and he were friends, right? Perhaps he could talk to her about it… It’d be less awkward than speaking to Aoi directly about it. Yeah. That sounded like a good plan. He’d try his hand at it. Who doesn’t dare doesn’t get anything, right?


	4. Friendly Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing: an implied timeskip, Jin and Shoichi, more love triangle bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you're too busy writing an actual book to pay the fucks this fic actually deserves  
> Oh well, for all 6 kudos and 1 subscriber this fic has... Y'know, sometimes, I wonder why I'm not getting my recognition.  
> Then I remember I don't write DSS. Rest in pussy.

Yusaku and Miyu Sugisaki had been friends on social media ever since Aoi had introduced them to each other, on an autumn day he didn’t remember much about. They had befriended each other afterwards, sharing some interests Aoi wasn’t into, video games being the most important topic they had bonded over as soon as they realized they both had the most random knowledge about it. Yes, sure, Takeru had some knowledge about video games too, but his main interests laid in history and mythology; so, aside from alternative history geopolitical simulators and games on legends and deities, he wasn’t that into it. Yusaku didn’t blame him for it, not at all: everyone had differing interests, and talking about video game history with his best friend was something he could spend hours upon hours doing.

However, Sugisaki was different in that regard. She had once told him how she had gotten into gaming as a hobby and, before she had realized it, a passion: once a sickly child, playing outside was out of the question most of the time, and video games filled the void of her fun needs and some socializing. She had met friends online through video game chats, friend code hunts, trades in raise-your-battle-companion games, forums, video comments… This obviously mattered very much to her, to the day she was still hunting for rare, alternate-coloured creatures in her favourite franchise’s different iterations and generations.

Of course, after a heartfelt story like this, Yusaku could only do two things: get to know her even more and tell his own origin story, one she had also been curious about. Much like her, video games had filled a void. As a child, he had always lived in foster families, with no sibling to grab onto, quiet and meek, never brave enough to talk to people. Takeru and he had actually met through a video game forum, back in the day, because the former was searching for a solution to a computer issue Yusaku just so happened to know a quick fix for. And then they hit it off, prompting him to continue indulging in a hobby, a sphere for which he had so many memories of bosses beaten, puzzles solved and difficult levels vanquished, the one thing that gave him his best friend, his other friend Kiku, and now Sugisaki.

 

As such, when Yusaku learnt Aoi and Sugisaki had started dating, he was conflicted. He should have been happy, he knew that, but his personal feelings for Aoi lingered against him. He was glad two of his friends had found each other, obviously loving being in a supportive relationship; and yet he was frustrated he, somehow, wasn’t included. He was included as a friend, of course, just like how Kiku and Takeru were – but he was striving for more, for closer links, for an embrace beyond a platonic pat. Fuck.

And, as he hated being as frustrated as he was there, Yusaku turned to the one person he entrusted the most about his relationship problems, about his teenage whining, about his occasional loneliness and depressive episodes: Shoichi Kusanagi, his childhood friend Jin’s older brother.

 

Yusaku, with how bad his childhood memories were, still remembered some elements about how he came to be the Kusanagi siblings’ loyal companion. He had moved to Den City with a foster family whose name he had forgotten since then and, shortly after, started attending school. Even if he had instantly hit it off with Takeru, he could never deny how much Jin mattered to him: the latter was the popular guy of the school, often flirted with by the girls, never hesitating to step his foot down. Usually, he quoted his brother’s silly proverbs and threw one-liners around, enjoying very much being the funny guy of his class.

Jin also happened to be a guy with an unsatisfiable thirst for discovery. He talked to everyone he hadn’t met yet at this point of his life, even if he’d also more often than not never talk to them afterwards. However, Yusaku had struck his interest more than anyone else, for a reason the latter still couldn’t pinpoint years after that had happened. Once again, a topic had bound them together: black comedy, and a deep confusion about love.

It didn’t take long for them to become close friends, at a time where Yusaku was already buddies with Takeru, but also at a time where he hadn’t met Aoi yet. To avoid his pesky foster parents, he’d spend more and more time at the Kusanagis, in Jin’s house which he shared with his older brother, Shoichi. While he’d always apologize for spending so much hours there a week, the brothers would always assure him he’d always be welcomed in their home. Sleepovers happened way more frequently too: it was the perfect opportunity for the three of them, the parents ever so absent from the greater picture (Shoichi had always told him they were very often on work trips, so he had never pressed any further), to bust out Yusaku’s retro TV-plugged consoles and dunk it out on fighting games and relay each other on platform games.

Losing and winning never mattered, in this kind of evenings. They had never kept up with scores seriously anyway. At times, their conversations could get a bit more serious, leading to some interesting talking points (Yusaku had been the first one to know, aside from Shoichi, about Jin’s sexuality. Not that it mattered much to him, but it was an important matter to Jin, so he’d always hear him out about it and would take in as much venting as he could), and to a sense of comfort among the three of them. In a way, Yusaku had become the third brother of the group, something he found an incredible amount of happiness in.

 

Shoichi wasn’t surprised, when Yusaku asked if he could ask him some stuff about love, feelings and relationships, as if he had known the question would pop out of the younger boy’s mouth sooner or later. To be fair, Shoichi was good at reading people, that maybe was why he had never gotten into much trouble despite how… borderline some of his hacking activities could get at times. At least, Yusaku felt comfortable telling his spiritual big brother about all he had on his heart. As such, he went through everything just like he’d come up with an essay on the spot: the situation, his feelings for Aoi, his friendship with Miyu, what Takeru had accidentally told him about (he still made Shoichi swear he’d never tell anyone else about it: it really mattered to Aoi that it’d be kept a secret, but he still needed to tell him about it to establish the full context to their conversation), his conflicting feelings about the recent turns of events.

“Yusaku, everyone’d feel conflicted in that kind of situations. You’re friends with both of them, and they’re dating each other, but you’re in love with one of them. Speaking of which, it reminds of something… You said you were friends with Sugisaki, right? Is there anything more to it?”

The question was a bit suspicious, as if he knew where it was heading, but he still replied honestly.

“We… get along a lot compared to other friends I had, aside from Takeru and Jin and you of course. But I think that’s it? At least for now.”

“Oh, okay. Because I know some people date multiple partners at once, with everyone knowing about it and all, when that kind of situation arises. Maybe try doing that? If they agree, of course. Maybe you’re that girl’s second crush!”

“God, I wish. I can always try, I suppose…”

When he left, Yusaku received a thumbs-up from Jin and a “good luck, pal” tap on the shoulder. They didn’t need to speak much to know what the other was thinking: Jin was aware of everything too, even if Yusaku had preferred asking his older brother about relationship business, they had always supported each other through the good and the unfortunate: it was merely a ritual, a habit for them to be this silent when others would have expected spoken purple prose.

 

In the end, Yusaku mustered the courage to tell Sugisaki about it through their usual chatting platform. They made some small talks, reported about their current video game-related projects, he asked her about Aoi and her relationship (discreetly: “how is it going with Aoi?”, “what projects for the future?”, etc., the blandest and most contrived questions he could come up with). The bomb still dropped sooner than he’d have wanted it to, as to, his surprise, it came from Sugisaki.

“Hey, Fujiki… Can I ask you something real quick? I’m afraid it’ll be indiscreet, tho…”

“Go ahead.”

“There’s a rumour going around that you have a crush on Aoi. Is that true?”

 

Yusaku didn’t know how to respond to that, initially. He wasn’t ready to be on the receiving end of an inconvenient interrogation, especially not when he wasn’t even fully ready to be the interrogator himself. However, he had sworn never to be a liar: Sugisaki wasn’t the enemy.

“Yes.”

Short, to the point, no suspense given. He didn’t have anything else to add.

“I see.”

A blank in their text conversation. Maybe she did see him as competition? Not everybody was perfectly fine with people loving multiple people at the same time. He could only hope he wasn’t losing two friends at once tonight.

“Well… I think you should have a talk with Aoi about it, one of these days. It could be solving some misunderstandings, just saying.”

Another blank. Yusaku didn’t know what to make of this one: was it a hint towards the second crush thing? Was he supposed to hope or abandon any dream of possibly making his crush be something more than a bundle of deeply frustrating feelings?

“Btw. You mind calling each other by their first name? I feel like we’ve gotten close enough for that, really quickly, y’know?”

Miyu did roll better on his tongue than the profoundly impersonal “Sugisaki”.

“Yeah. Why not.”

“Sweeeeeeeeeet.”

 

Their conversation quickly turned back to video games and school, even if her remark stayed in the back of his mind after he had turned laptop and phone off. Have a talk about it with Aoi… There was something flying over his head for sure. Too many remarks of the same calibre happening one after the other couldn’t just be a coincidence. He had, however, never been a conspiracy theorist, so he left that idea out the window and focused on getting sleep… and perhaps actually having that talk with his crush. Miyu couldn’t have been setting him up for disaster, couldn’t she?


	5. Twin Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's weird to hear two love confessions within weeks of each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see, huh?   
> College has kicked my ass again and I'm working on a novel for Camp NaNoWriMo (but not just CNNWM), in case you wondered where I've been for the past few weeks.  
> Ironically, I wrote up this chapter in like 2 hours. Tango à Trois is one of these stories where I need to be in a specific mood to write a chapter, but when I am, I nyoom through it at the speed of sound. I hope you'll like it as much as I love reading all the nice comments I receive on this fic!

Aoi was surprised when Yusaku asked her if they could speak together in private. Now, it wasn’t that she didn’t mind (quite the opposite, actually. Spending time alone together with one of her crushes? Hell yeah). She was simply curious, if not a bit suspicious, of how sudden this was: Yusaku had never been the kind to pull her away from the world and whisper dirty things into her ear (once again, she wouldn’t have minded that either…), why would he suddenly decide to do so? Well, she also guessed her imagination was running wild, letting herself think up all these unchivalrous things when she should have focused on her relationship at hand.

Wasn’t secretly wishing Yusaku would initiate some intense make-out sessions with her cheating on Miyu? Technically, the latter also knew about her girlfriend’s second crush, they had every single card in their deck laid in front of the other with no intention to ever hide their heart’s content. Miyu, with her expert gaze and more advanced mind than hers in romance, probably knew about the undisclosed desires within her heart. It didn’t count as cheating if the other knew what was going on better than she did, right?

This was way too confusing.

 

As it stood, Yusaku brought her to a calm spot, hidden away from the rest of the school, a tiny place isolated from the world. The air of secrecy made her heart heavy and her mind wait in anticipation, unsure of what to expect. He didn’t look as serene as he usually did either: his breathing was heavy, his eyes were hesitant, never looking fully forward, slightly slumped onto himself. Yusaku looked so unsure, fragile even, that she didn’t know how to really handle it. There had to be something weighing like lead on his chest for him to be this tangibly uncertain…

It broke her heart to see him that way. She was so used to the confident, stoic young man that she had almost forgotten he was only sixteen like she was. Worry bloomed inside her own chest, concerned as to what could be causing him such distress at such a noticeable intensity. What was wrong, her tongue burned to ask; what did you want to tell me, it said instead. Maybe she didn’t want him to worry for her either, leading her to respond to the situation in such an inappropriately weird manner.

 

“Well, huh… How do I explain that…?”

The uncertainty on his face and body was mirrored in his voice, cords hesitating to tremble. Such an uncharacteristic behaviour… Even when he saw her first holding Miyu’s hand at school, he didn’t look this… unserene (albeit there had been something lingering within him, and while she still had no idea what it was, she had simply felt it too strongly not to ignore it now). What happened? What was wrong?

“I… I want to preface this by saying I know you’re dating Miyu and, huh…”

The name shift didn’t disturb her as much as she thought it would. Her girlfriend had told her about Yusaku and her going on a first-name basis, something she was happy to know about. Her two loved ones getting along? Hell yeah. Her loved not-boyfriend looking so unhappy and stressed out? Hell no.

“I’m… sorry for what I’m about to say, b-but…”

Hearing him struggle so much to speak, hurting to tell her what she didn’t know he was about to say, was almost too much for her. Her impulses told her to just smack her lips against his, or to merely embrace him and tell him he could always tell her later when he felt better or readier. Instead, she stayed there, unmoving, immobile. Oh, did she hate herself for her cowardly manners.

“Turns out I… love you, Aoi.”

 

Her world stopped again.

 

“I…”

Her voice had gone mute. It had vanished when she needed it the most, because only her lips and cords would move anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Yusaku said, suddenly, breaking away and getting ready running away. She knew it, but her arm didn’t move, her lips didn’t move, until it was almost too late.

 

When he tried to flee, her wrist moved on its own and grabbed his forearm with the strongest grip she had ever felt herself give. It meant everything to her to respond to him, to make him know his feelings weren’t wrong, that, in a way, it could all be fine and dandy in their little world of teenage ideals…

“Wait, Yusaku!” she said to him, eyes swelling with tears she didn’t want to see herself shed and him to witness. “I… I’ve got something to tell you to!”

He stopped in his tracks, but never truly facing her. She mostly saw his back, his blue hair brushing against his shoulder, a part of his face she couldn’t make a lot of. He was hiding back in his closet of secrets. He was mentally running away from her, she just knew it, so she had to act fast, but not too fast, and—

“I love you too!!”

 

Her impulses had spoken for her. Her calm attitude had slipped away under the pressure of the situation, leaving her feeling both embarrassed and somewhat proud of herself. She had proven that she cared, that she could pull off such stunts and yet not back down immediately after speaking out her mind. Of course, she wished it had gone smoother, that he didn’t look so startled and that she hadn’t screamed into the air her deepest, most shameful feelings as a “taken” girl. But what was the measure of “taken” when she had two loved ones? Did she just happen to be half-taken and half-available?

Nobody gave a damn. She sure didn’t. She was her, she did her. If she was in love with two different people at the same time, then so be it.

She had confessed to her second crush like a shojo manga protagonist? And that was because it was reciprocal? _Then so be it._

 

His instincts had acted for him. Before Aoi knew it, and before Yusaku could have possibly reacted against them, she found herself in his arms. A single tear escaped his face and landed on her shoulder, almost too metaphorical for her not to have imagined it landing there, sealing away their fear of the other, of the world knowing what they felt for each other better than they did.

Aoi’s heart couldn’t slow down even if it had wanted to. Her feelings went by so quickly that it was like being in the eye of a typhoon: she didn’t feel the strength of the violent and vicious warm winds, only witnessed them rampaging around her brain, tearing away her former certainties, replacing them with a tabula rasa… where only her friends and her feelings for Miyu were left, intact, untouched. Why would they? It wasn’t because she loved Yusaku that she didn’t love Miyu. It wasn’t because she loved two people that she had stopped caring for her brother, for Ema, for Kiku.

She was, however, fully conscious she wasn’t the only nervous one. Yusaku’s heart beat as fast as hers, maybe even faster and with more intensity, against her own chest. Like she had melted into Miyu’s embrace, she was in unison with him. How could she even pick between the two? She loved them with equally intense feelings, even if the ones she had for Yusaku had been shorter-lived. They simply were younger, thus why she wasn’t as much in control of them as she had been with the older, wiser, more matured ones she had for Miyu.

It all felt _natural_.

 

The embrace let go off them both shortly after time had taken back its course. They still were alone in their little world of feelings and fusional hearts; but they were alone together, and that was what mattered. His eyes felt surer, more certain, their fear and anxiety gone. She herself felt easier seeing him more relaxed, happier, relieved. And yet, tension remained, lingering like a snake about to bite someone in the ankle while they aren’t looking.

And that snake must have been stomped off before it could even attempt harming him.

 

“I know the situation must be weird for you, Yusaku,” she opened back the discussion. “But I can explain.”

Even if she making extra-sure he wasn’t getting weirded out, he didn’t seem that disturbed, or even surprised. Maybe it was her getting the situation on his side wrong, though, considering he was smiling like anyone would after a love confession proven reciprocal. Wasn’t she dumbly smiling either? She must have been.

“It… turns out people can have crushes on different people at once.”

“I know.”

“And that… I do have two crushes at once.”

“I’d have guessed.”

“So, huh… It’s kind of a complicated mess, but I think we could work it all out. Well, at least, that’s what Miyu says…”

Yusaku didn’t reply on that one. He just nodded, as if he had already been aware of that. She suspected Miyu had done some talking of her own…

“So, what I meant to say is… I’m gonna talk to Miyu about it, okay?”

 

It then hit her on the head. Why try solving everything by two-timing it… when she could just have the three of them gathered in the same place and solve everything with everyone being in the know? She felt rather stupid for not thinking of it before, she had to absolutely admit, but it was the best solution to the issue she could have ever found.

“Wait, no. I’ve got a better idea. What about we all speak together about it, be clean and all?”

Yusaku nodded again, “Seems like the best way out.”

“Great. I’ll just have to contact you both when I’ll have found the perfect time for us to spend like an afternoon to sort things out… It’ll be alright.”

She sighed, relieved, worried, she wasn’t sure of what she felt anymore. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was how she ended this weird, intense, pleasing moment of her life.

“It’ll be alright,” she whispered as she picked Yusaku’s hand in hers and sent a text message to Miyu with her other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: in case you didn't know, "tabula rasa" is Latin for "razed table", and refers to starting from scratch by throwing away/destroying what was previously established.  
> I'm too much of a khâgne to write a VRAINS fic smh


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